France's Sordid Housing Scheme

If you think we are having a little bit of trouble in the residential market, with high cost of renting, then we only need to look across the Channel at our amis in France.

An under cover report has revealed a sordid housing epidemic where properties are offered for rent in return for services.

Whilst initially these seems quite innocuous and in some circumstances these services can mean, cleaning, maintaining etc. However a six month expose by a French reporter has revealed that in some circumstances this can mean other services.

"Sex twice a month," is one blunt demand. Another asks for someone "open in spirit and elsewhere". "Flat in exchange for libertine services," goes another.

Sex for rent is the extreme end of an extreme problem which is catching swathes of France's most vulnerable people - the young and the poor - in its grip.

France, the government admits, is in the grip of its worst housing crisis since the end of World War II.

You should see our landlord.... reminder to self... always pay the rent on time...